MICHELLE KNOX    Statement    +    CV

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Michelle Knox is a New Jersey native. She relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1997 where she attended and graduated from The California College of the Arts in 2000. Awarded a full scholarship, Michelle will pursue her MFA at Tulane in 2009.

Michelle won both the Saxe Family Scholarship for Pilchuck Glass School and the Richard Ritter Scholarship for Penland School of Crafts. Most recently, Michelle was nominated for the Corning Award from Pilchuck Glass School, after a session as an Artist Assistant in the summer of 2007. Over the past several years, she attended other glass institutes such as Public Glass (San Francisco), Urban Glass (Brooklyn), and BAGI (San Jose). In 2008, she won her first Public Art grant with the Richmond Art Center, to produce a permanent public art piece in the city of Richmond CA.

Michelle is currently the Executive Director at Public Glass in San Francisco. She is emerging into her career and shows locally throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Some of her venues include the Oakland Museum, The Museum of Craft and Design, and the National Liberty Museums’ annual auction, along with other fine art galleries. Trained classically as a glass blower, Michelle has recently ventured into sculpturing and painting on glass. She has several different bodies of work that have multiply ranges of topics and materials. Michelle lives and works in Oakland, California.

Statement

The motivation behind making my artwork comes from a deep-rooted desire to affect my world and create a positive sense of self.  I completely enjoy the feeling that creating something unique brings to me. I choose glass as a medium because it is so alluring, so fragile and so representational of the human condition. The combination of material in my work allows me to play on the tension and fragility of glass as a metaphor and the rigidness of metal as a foundation to balance that fragility. 

The current state of modern life is so busy, so full with tasks and needs. My work is a reaction to that white noise, that static pace of life and the over load of information. My work represents something simple, something quiet and something almost forgotten in the American way of life. My work is not over done or over engineered or loaded with connotation but remains simple, pure and quite. The process and the products reconnect me with a lost sense of spirituality in my own life and heightens my awareness of the lack of it in the world around me.

The loss of precious things, ancestral traces and meaningful talisman is concerning to me. In the objects I create, I bring those moments of reflection; I reintroduce preciousness into an object and spark a memory of history.

The Protean Series is an example of that. Protean is a word that is used to describe the nature of change and variations, the ability to readily assume different shapes and forms. The series represents the concept of taking multiple similar shapes and re-structuring them to create pieces of different emotion and meaning. Through this process, transforming and varying the structure allows me to reveal the objects relevance and preciousness. To set it out side of the realm of modernism and to limit commentary on a current issue or state. Meanwhile, allowing the object to create a historical connection with repetition, prayer and ritual.

The next major series for me right now is the Chorten Series. This series lies in close proximity to the Komboloi Series. These series have roots in spiritual artifacts that have affected my life. Chorten’s are stuppas or reliquaries and the word Komboloi come from the Greek language and means “worry beads”. Each body of work utilizes simple blown forms accompanied with minimal metal parts to recreate or refresh the concept of “special and sacred”. Simultaneously, these pieces are representing ritualistic objects and process.

Résumé:

Education:

1997-2000	California College of the Arts.  Bachelor of Fine Arts/ Glass Major, Oakland, CA
1995-1997	Franklin Pierce College.  Environmental Science/ Glass Minor, Rindge, NH

Additional Education:

2007	Pilchuck Glass School, Artist Assistant: Arthur Gonzales, Stanwood, WA
2004	Penland School of Crafts, Glass and Metal Combination Class, Penland, NC
2004	The Crucible, Drawing for Sculpture, Oakland, CA
2003	Independent Extended Travel, Southeast Asia
2000	Pilchuck Glass School, Summer Staff, Stanwood, WA
1999	Pilchuck Glass School, Hot Sculpting with Deborah Czersko, Stanwood, WA
1998	Urban Glass, Goblet workshop/Alan Goldfarb, Brooklyn, NY

Selected Exhibitions:

2008:	Arts94124 Gallery, “Heat and Light” (group), San Francisco, CA
	Varnish Galley (2-person), San Francisco, CA
	The Public Glass Gallery (solo), San Francisco, CA
2007	The San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design, CCA: A Legacy in Studio Glass, San Francisco, CA
2006	The Oakland Museum, Made in California: Glass Exhibition, Oakland, CA
2006	National Liberty Museum, Glass Now: 2006 Auction Event, Philadelphia, PA
2005	Deep Gallery (group), Sacramento, CA
	Melting Point Gallery, Guilty by Association:(group), San Francisco, CA
	Imagery Partners, Portland OR

Scholarships and Awards:

2008	City of Richmond California, Public Art Grant, Project is designed to build an exterior Mosaic glass mural in the City Of Richmond CA
	City Of Sacramento, Finalist for Green-Haven Pocket Library: Art in Public Places Project
2007	The Corning Award nomination from Pilchuck Glass School
2004	Richard Ritter Scholarship to attend Penland School of Crafts
2000	Honorable Mention: All College Honors for Creative writing CCA
1999	Saxe Family Scholarship for Pilchuck Glass School
1995-1997	Dean’s List: Franklin Pierce College

Professional Experience

2008	Director of Public Glass: San Francisco’s Center for Art Glass, non-profit organization
2006-present	Business owner of The Knox Resource Group
2002-2005	Lighting and Glass technician and designer for Lightspann Illumination Design

Selected Private Collections:

Richard Pi: San Jose CA

Michael Himes: Fort Wayne IN

Dan Rosen: Kirkland WA

Merle Hofman: Wynnewood, PA

Sharlin and Mel Galpin: Los Angeles, CA